End of a Splendid Pairing

This is very sad news. I learned from Facebook earlier this week that Michael G. Jacob, who with his wife, Daniela De Gregorio (and under their joint pen name, Michael Gregorio), wrote the excellent Hanno Stiffeniis and Sebastiano Cangio series, “died suddenly back in November,” just a month after his 77th birthday. I haven’t found an obituary published anywhere that cites his cause of death.

What little I can easily piece together of Michael’s backstory is this: He was born in Liverpool, England, on October 8, 1948, and eventually graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne before moving to Italy. He and Daniela lived in Spoleto, a small town in that country’s Umbria region. At one point he taught English and the history of photography. But both Michael and Daniela wished to publish novels. He recounted during a 2010 interview with The Rap Sheet how they finally made that dream come true:

Back in 2000, we were working separately on novels, but neither of us seemed to be going any­­where. Daniela was teaching philosophy, and she was fascinated by something she had read about the Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Indeed, she had plans to write a short story about the great thinker, and the rough ex-soldier, Martin Lampe, who was his personal valet. The two men had been living under the same roof for almost 30 years when, one day, the servant was sacked on the spot. What had Lampe done to give offense? And why did the “most rational man in the world” paste notices around his house, reminding himself to “Forget Martin Lampe”? Kant’s biographers had little to say on the subject, so we began working together on a possible explanation. The result in 2006 was A Critique of Criminal Reason.

Although Kant plays a role in the serial-murder investigation central to that novel, set in 1804 in the then-Prussian town of Königsberg (now part of Russia), the protagonist is actually a young magistrate and reluctant investigator, Hanno Stiffeniis. Michael and Daniela later produced another three tales starring Stiffeniis, the last of which was Unholy Awakening (2010). After announcing it was “time for Hanno to take a break,” they created another mystery series, this one set in modern times and led by Sebastiano Cangio, a park ranger in central Italy’s “stunning” Sybilline Mountains National Park. The first of those three works was Cry Wolf, which appeared in 2014. At least one other work of historical fiction carries the Michael Gregorio byline: Your Money or Your Life, published in France in 2013 and featuring Renaissance-era fresco artists traveling through Italy.

Although we never met, Michael was a fine and thoughtful correspondent. He contributed a variety of posts to The Rap Sheet over the years, on subjects ranging from the 2008 Italian Mafia movie Gomorra to Mike Ripley’s 2017 study of British thrillers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I read and greatly enjoyed all four of the Stiffeniis novels he penned with Daniela, and I still look at them fondly on my bookcases. He will be greatly and truly missed.

I wish Daniela the best in the face of this loss.

READ MORE: “Michael Gregorio on the Mafia, Pseudonyms and More” (Publishers Weekly).

How British Thrillers Changed the World

By Michael Gregorio
Mike Ripley has a serious mission in life.

In his monthly column for Shots, “Getting Away with Murder,” he reports on the latest crime-fiction releases. But Ripley invariably reminds readers as well of at least one or two—sometimes half a dozen—thriller novels that once took the world by storm.

Now, in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: The Boom in British Thrillers from “Casino Royale” to “The Eagle Has Landed” (HarperCollins UK), this author-critic’s lifelong love of the genre is laid out on the table ready for devouring. An entertaining history of popular literature, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang charts the early flowering of the British adventure story in the 1950s, its evolution into the spy-fantasy novel (which culminated in Ian Fleming’s best-selling James Bond series), and its transition into the more measured espionage fiction which arrived with the Cold War. The book’s title comes from a letter that Fleming wrote to Raymond Chandler in 1956: “You write novels of suspense—if not sociological studies,” remarked Fleming, “whereas my books are straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety.”

Fantasy versus sociology?

Things are not quite so simple, as Mr. Ripley indicates, laying out in these pages the grim history of post-war Britain, a time when the fighting had been won but the Empire was shrinking, and food rationing was a fact of life. He suggests that the evolution of thriller fiction followed the shifts of British social history more closely than any other popular literary genre. As anyone familiar with his Shots column (or with his Fitzroy Maclean Angel novels) would expect, wry humor is never in short supply here, as “The Ripster” recounts a host of fascinating tales behind the blockbuster novels and the best-selling authors who wrote them, noting in one instance: “When it came to villains, you couldn’t beat a good Nazi.”

This is an authoritative survey for readers who would like to learn more about the growth and development of thriller fiction, but might not know just where to start their research. I was amazed by how many titles Ripley references, and more surprised still to realize that I had already read quite a number of the books. Growing up in England during the 1950s and ’60s, it was inevitable, I suppose. The paperback was new, and the writers were many.

It’s inevitable, too, that a wide variety of these fine works have been all but forgotten over the years.

Thanks to Ripley’s efforts, however, history is being set straight and works long neglected—many of them out of print—will likely find new fans in the 21st century. Count me among them: I am currently reading and enjoying a host of classic thrillers mentioned in Ripley’s book. In addition, I asked the author to answer a few questions about his interest in the genre.

Michael Gregorio: Do you remember the first thriller you ever read?

Mike Ripley: I couldn’t swear to it, but the first adult thriller was possibly Hammond Innes’ The White South [1949], set in the (now) politically incorrect world of whale haunting in the Antarctic, followed quickly by Alistair MacLean’s HMS Ulysses [1955]. I was living in a small mining village in Yorkshire, would have been 10, and [was] about to leave primary school.

I do remember, at public school aged 12, reading [Fleming’s] Thunderball and Dr. No in quick succession, followed by [Len Deighton’s] The IPCRESS File, probably when the film came out. I was 13 when I read [John le Carré’s] The Spy Who Came in from the Cold—I still have the 1965 Pan paperback, priced five shillings (25p)!

MG: What makes a thriller memorable, in your opinion?

MR: What makes a thriller memorable? Any (or all) of the basic ingredients: jeopardy—both personal to the hero/heroine or to a larger entity such as a city, a military installation, an economy or a state; suspense—the idea of a deadline, or a ticking-clock; an exotic location, or somewhere where man is up against the natural elements; conflict—violent action scenes; a hero/heroine who is human and could get hurt, although at times displays almost superhuman qualities and could be just as cunning and ruthless as the villains.

MG: Who is the greatest thriller writer of all time?

MR: Impossible to say, so I’ll chicken out of picking one. But any decent short-list would include John Buchan (“old school”), Geoffrey Household (“the romantic and noble rogue male hero”), Eric Ambler (spies and shady goings-on with a left-wing slant), Ian Fleming (spy fantasy), Len Deighton (a stylistic mold-breaker), John le Carré (spies, betrayal and the English class system), and Alistair MacLean and Hammond Innes (of the “adventure thriller” school). I have stayed very much in my comfort zone here, ignoring other types of thriller and many excellent non-British writers.

MG: Who is the most accomplished writer of thrillers today?

MR: The most accomplished? Difficult question. In totally different fields and styles, I’d go for Alan Furst, Ben Pastor, and Philip Kerr, who all root their thrillers in the history of World War II; Martin Cruz Smith, who can range over history and different locations; and when it comes to the strong, silent hero who rides to the rescue, one has to include Lee Child, who writes “classical modern” thrillers (if that makes sense). And this brutally ignores the writers of some brilliant crime thrillers, police thrillers, psychological thrillers, etc.

MG: Would you describe your “Angel” novels as thrillers?

MR: Angel? Well, comedy-thrillers maybe. They are not “whodunits” so much as “how does he get out of this” stories, often “how the hell did he get into this.” I hope they have some suspense and believable action and heroics, and therefore provide a few thrills, but their main purpose is to tell jokes. I guess I am not so much a writer as a frustrated stand-up comedian.

(Editor’s note: Ripley’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang will go on sale in the United States this coming September.)

Campion’s Humorous New Champion

(Editor’s note: The following short review comes from “Michael Gregorio,” a byline behind which hides the husband-and-wife writing team of Daniela De Gregorio and Michael G. Jacob. After penning four historical mysteries featuring early 19th-century Prussian magistrate-cum-detective Hanno Stiffeniis, including 2010’s Unholy Awakening, the pair most recently published Cry Wolf, the opening entry in a new crime series set in Italy’s Umbria region.)

Margery Allingham, one of the queens of the “Golden Age” of British detective stories, died in 1966. Her husband of almost four decades, Philip Youngman Carter, took up the baton for a few years after that, composing fiction starring his wife’s “gentleman sleuth,” Albert Campion, and writing under her name, but then he, too, passed away in 1969. Allingham fans were left in the lurch, so to speak, until author author-critic Mike Ripley stepped bravely into the breach more than 40 years later, having been invited to compose Mr. Campion’s Farewell from notes that Youngman Carter left to the Margery Allingham Society, the members of which were desperate to read more.

No one could have been better suited for the job.

Ripley, better known to his fans as “The Ripster” (the nickname with which he signs each edition of “Getting Away with Murder,” his monthly Shots column), is a truly entertaining writer. Rap Sheet contributor Jim Napier included Mr. Campion’s Farewell among his favorite mystery novels of 2014, describing it as “a delightful, timeless tale.” The new Mr. Campion’s Fox (Severn House), the latest installment in what promises to be a sparkling continuation of Margery Allingham’s series, takes the Ripster one step further into her bygone literary world, producing a classic-style detective yarn that’s exquisitely faithful to the original design, but also great fun to read.

Set for the most part in a tiny village on the Suffolk coast of England, with occasional trips into London’s sometimes seedy Soho district, this novel is peopled by a rich and varied cast of characters straight out of the 1960s. There’s the Misses Mister, for example, two eccentric spinster sisters who own the local brewery, and the lugubrious Mr. Lugg, the beadle, who plunges readers into the mystery involving the disappearance of Vibeke, a Danish au pair girl, and the death of her boyfriend, Frank Tate. Murders there are in these pages, and they can be violent. However, they never overstep the limits of taste established by Margery Allingham and her fellow Golden Age authors--Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, and their like.

A tight and lively plot is generously seasoned with sardonic quips and humor, as those who have read any of Ripley’s 15 novels about musician-gumshoe Fitzroy Maclean Angel (Angels Unaware, etc.) have come to expect. At the same time, Ripley has to cope in this story with the fact that Allingham’s hero, Albert Campion, has become an old man, and he does so quite cleverly by employing Campion’s (younger) wife, Lady Amanda, and his son, Rupert, to do all the footwork, while the senior Campion’s brain remains as lively as ever. The same goes for his sense of the absurd. What does Mr. Campion wish to have inscribed on his tombstone, for example? “‘Albert Campion. Permanently in the Dark.’ How’s that for an epitaph?”

Mr. Campion’s Fox will delight both longtime Margery Allingham enthusiasts and a generation of younger readers who may not yet be familiar with her work.

Hats off to Mike Ripley!

The Story Behind the Story: “Cry Wolf,” by Michael Gregorio

(Editor’s note: With this 54th entry in our “Story Behind the Story” series, we once more give center stage to the husband-and-wife team of Daniela De Gregorio and Michael G. Jacob, who write under the byline “Michael Gregorio.” After penning four historical mysteries featuring early 19th-century Prussian magistrate-cum-detective Hanno Stiffeniis, the most recent of which was Unholy Awakening, these two have taken off in a very different direction, publishing Cry Wolf [Severn House], a new mafia thriller set in central Italy’s Umbria region, where the couple live. Below, they tell why they’ve chosen this new literary path.)

Why kick good fortune in the teeth?

This is a dilemma that many writers have to face at some time.

You sold your first novel as part of a two-book deal. Those two books sold well enough for your publisher to ask for two more, featuring the same protagonist and setting. Before you know it, you have become a brand, and you’ve been pigeon-holed. You are now a relatively well-known writer of “historical thrillers” in the UK, or “historical mysteries” in the USA, and your novels have been translated into more than 20 languages. Your publisher is smiling, your agent is pleased, you have a growing band of faithful readers, and no one feels the need to ask you what you think about it.

That was pretty much the position Daniela and I were in when the following remarks, delivered by critic Barry Forshaw, appeared in The Independent in 2010:

The publishers tout Unholy Awakening as a “dark, gothic, vampiric mystery set in 19th-century Prussia,” and it’s hard to argue with this summary. With their first book, Critique of Criminal Reason, the husband-and-wife team who are Michael Gregorio managed to shoehorn references to the philosopher Kant into a thriller scenario. That book was a sweeping piece set in the Age of Enlightenment, with Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis enlisting Kant to aid him in investigating a series of violent deaths in Königsberg. It was clear that attention had to be paid to a major new talent in the period-crime field. Subsequent books (Days of Atonement and A Visible Darkness) have added lustre to the Gregorio brand. The reader of Unholy Awakening will notice fewer philosophical underpinnings in this gruesome narrative, but the powerful sense of time and place--and the minatory atmosphere--are in place.

Who wouldn’t be happy with such a write-up?

Obviously, we were very happy, but after four books featuring Hanno Stiffeniis, we felt that it was time for us to take a step back and decide whether we really wanted to be the next C.J. Sansom or Hilary Mantel.

Doesn’t that sound logical, measured, and cool?

It sure does, but that is not what happened.

What really happened was this: our lives were turned upside-down by something over which we had no control. One day, our next-door neighbor was arrested. Just 20 years old, he and four young friends were accused of being terrorists. We knew them well. Daniela and I live in a lovely old town in central Italy, and we had taken part with the five boys and hundreds of other people in protest meetings, sit-ins, and marches against building speculation that threatened to spoil the town, in our opinion. We’d appeared on television, and enlisted the help of prominent Italian environmentalists, art historians, and politicians. Questions were asked about the local clash in the Italian parliament. And just when everything was slipping into place, the police pounced at dawn one morning and arrested the five most defenseless kids in the protest movement. OK, so they had written slogans on walls, but what else had they done? The local authorities accused them of plotting acts of violence, hiding weapons and explosives. They had, according to the police, sent an envelope containing unexploded bullets to a regional political bigwig.

We put aside our plans to write another Hanno Stiffeniis mystery set in a fictional town in 19th-century Prussia, and we discussed what was going on in our own back yard. Right or wrong, what we came up with was this: the boys had been set up. Could we sit down and write another fancy tale for lovers of cute historical crime fiction while those poor kids were languishing, innocent, in jail? Of course, we couldn’t. So we helped to organize protest marches, spoke at public meetings, testified in court in their defense, wrote to national newspapers and appeared on local TV saying that they were innocent, and that it was a major miscarriage of justice.

And then, one day, we received an e-mail message …

An Italian publisher with a strong interest in environmental questions had launched a series of novels with crime and the environment as their central themes. Would we be interested in writing a novel about what had occurred in our town to kids that we knew?

We jumped at the opportunity, with one small reservation. We agreed to write a fictionalized account of what had happened, but we refused to sell the foreign rights. Boschi & Bossoli was published as a standalone in Italy in 2012. It wasn’t an immense success--it was too political, too vindictive, too Italian, let’s say--but it was something that we had to write. And while we were writing it, we came up with a theory that we couldn’t use in the Italian book, precisely because it was so political, so vindictive, so simple, and so Italian, too.

Who was behind the conspiracy that took five young people to a maximum-security prison, where one of them celebrated his 21st birthday alone in an isolation cell?

It sounds phony when you suggest such a conspiracy, but we believe that it was true. The mafia was behind it. Not the mafia of The Godfather or Gomorra, but another kind of mafia, an evil coalition of local business interests, greedy politicians, ambitious policemen, all with the desire to crush a protest movement convinced that there are more important things in this world than money, power, and a disregard for the beauty of a fragile eco-culture which the small country town of Spoleto represented.

We knew the book would not be a commercial success. That was why we held back the world rights. Daniela and I had decided that we were no longer exclusively interested in Immanuel Kant, Prussia, and Hanno Stiffeniis. Indeed, we wanted to write a new and different version of the Italian story, a fictionalized and damning portrayal of all the smaller mafias that make life in Italy such a hassle.

We re-used some of the original material we had gathered, and invented a great deal more. We took away the central role in the story from the kids, and we spoke through the mouths of the real protagonists, the crooked politicians, cynical cops, and professional criminals who had been behind the conspiracy to ruin Spoleto for their own selfish interests. We did “a James Ellroy,” let’s say--very different, but very exciting for us. We had to invent a new central character who would bring all these elements into focus, a park ranger named Sebastiano Cangio, who sees signs of the Calabrian mafia--the ’Ndrangheta--invading tranquil Umbria, and in Cry Wolf, we feel that we have achieved exactly what we set out to achieve. This novel was released in the UK in December, and goes on sale in America this month. It has garnered reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews which go beyond our wildest dreams:

Outstanding writing, a suspenseful and terrifying plot, and enough twists to keep even the most seasoned reader guessing, this is a terrific read that belongs in all mystery collections. (Booklist Starred Review)

But there’s an even better end to the real story.

The five kids were found innocent of the terrorism charges, the political bigwig who received the letter containing bullets will go on trial for corruption in the near future, and the crooked policeman who arrested the boys was condemned to 14 years in jail for running arms and drugs, and for his “limitless ambition” (in the words of the judge). Even better, after what amounts to seven of the busiest years of our lives, the ugly modern building which started the whole thing off has been scheduled for demolition!

Did we do the right thing to kick good fortune in the teeth?

We feel that we did the only thing possible under the circumstances. We also feel that we have been well rewarded for it. We have opened a new series of “Sebastiano Cangio mysteries” with a new publisher, and we still have magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis in the wings, if any enterprising publisher feels like asking us to pick up the Prussian historical mystery series again.

Like German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, we feel that we are living in “the best of all possible worlds.”

Voltaire, the pragmatist, on the other hand, just laughed at fools like us and Leibnitz!

Bullet Points: Another Beautiful Day Edition

• The last I heard from John Kenyon, the editor of Grift Magazine, he was delivering his favorite books of 2013 list. That was back in early December of last year. Since then, the word went out that Grift had folded--which seemed a damn shame. But suddenly, the print periodical is back. “Things will creak into operation here online in the next couple of weeks,” he writes. “In the meantime, what I’m really excited to announce is that plans are underway for a third print issue. I’m going to try a theme issue this time around, with the content focusing however tangentially on MUSIC. As we explain in the freshly revised submission guidelines, ‘the fiction should include some element of music. Maybe it’s a (literal) roving band that commits crimes, maybe there is a concert, or a favorite song … or a musical instrument used as a weapon. Be inventive. The non-fiction ought to deal at least in part with this subject as well.’” Kenyon will begin accepting submissions again in July.

• This last weekend’s mail brought me a copy of Black Scat Review, the quite handsome, “irregularly” published magazine, which includes in its latest, “Lit Noir” issue an essay I wrote about my fascination with vintage crime and detective novels. It includes remarks on works by Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Ed Lacy, O.G. Benson, Talmage Powell, and others. Also among the contents of this edition are contributions by Kelli Stanley, Michael Hemmingson, Susan Siegrist, Tom Larsen, and others. You can snag a copy for yourself here.

• A year ago, I installed the opening from Return of the Saint on The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page. (You can find that here.) But I don’t remember ever watching that 1978-1979 British TV series, which brought new vigor to Leslie Charteris’ do-gooder series character, Simon Templar, portrayed in this case by Ian Ogilvy rather than Roger Moore (who’d starred in the 1962-1969 ITC series, The Saint). Apparently, it was no easy thing to bring Templar back to the small-screen, as the blog Cult TV Lounge explains:

The idea of reviving The Saint had been around almost from the time that production ceased on the original series. A major problem was of course casting. The problem was not just that Roger Moore was so completely identified as Simon Templar, it was also that Moore had very much defined the character. Any new actor stepping into the role was going to have to be to some extent in the same style, otherwise the new series would simply be another generic action series rather than an authentic Saint series. Ian Ogilvy proved to be the best possible choice. He even slightly resembled Roger Moore and he had no difficulty adapting to the role. Perhaps he does not have quite as much charisma as Roger Moore but he does fit the character as defined in the later Saint stories pretty well.

Cult TV Lounge is a recent discovery of mine, and I’ve been quite enjoying it. In addition to that Saint post, check out this one about Stefanie Powers’ 1966-1967 NBC series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

• British critic/wit Mike Ripley is out a wee bit early with his July installment of “Getting Away with Murder,” his column for Shots. Among the topics being considered this time: London’s recent “More Bloody Foreigners” event; the return to print of “two of spy fiction’s hard men--David Callan and John Craig”; and new works by C.J. Sansom, Dominique Manotti, James Ellroy, Deon Meyer, Stella Rimington, David Downing, and “Sam Alexander.”

• A quick reminder: The Wolfe Pack, the New York-based Nero Wolfe/Rex Stout fan group, is soliciting entries to its ninth annual Black Orchid Novella Award competition. As a Pack news release explains, “Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length, and must be postmarked by May 31, 2015. The winner will be announced at The Wolfe Pack’s Annual Black Orchid Banquet in New York City, December 5, 2015.” More details about entering your work are here.

• The New York Times’ Dan Saltzstein takes a spin through San Francisco’s noir side, led by Hammett tour guide Don Herron.

• Who remembers Silk Stalkings?

• Salon’s Julia Cooke isn’t impressed by American television’s growing contingent of female spies, the lot of them trying to balance work and family. As she remarks,

Sex appeal, instincts, singularity of mission: the necessary traits of a female spy on TV. And another characteristic unites these shows: They are male-generated worlds populated by women conceived of by men.

The male-drawn women of TV spyland seem to point toward a singular, blunt perspective on the debates dominating American feminism today. No, they say, you can’t have “it all.” Yes, they say, you will be forever swapping hats, though by occasionally dipping into the “simpler” pleasures of domestic life, you may find relief. Yes, you will be expected to be beautiful. These characters are television clichés, but they are also feminine clichés, bundled together and then pulled apart piece by piece: they can’t be controlled or entirely understood, they are electroshock-therapy-crazy, dangerously seductive, a collection of body parts to be ogled.

• Friend of The Rap Sheet Michael G. Jacob, who with his wife, Daniella De Gregorio, penned five novels about early 19th-century Prussian magistrate-cum-sleuth Hanno Stiffeniis (including 2009’s A Visible Darkness), wrote recently to say that he’s hard at work on a fresh project: “Well, we have just sold the first one in a brand-new series, Cry Wolf. Severn House Crime will publish it in England in November and on March 1, 2015, in the States. We are planning to do at least three of them. We’re halfway through number two at the moment (entitled Marzio Dies), having a lot of fun. The central theme is the Calabrian mafia--the ’Ndrangheta--and its rapid spread throughout Italy, bringing violence and corruption to sleepy places like the town in Umbria where we live, and totally devastating the lives of anyone who gets involved with them.” I look forward to seeing Cry Wolf and its sequels in my local bookshop.

• John “J.F.” Norris has posted, in his blog Pretty Sinister Books, a fine assessment of A Sad Song Singing (1963), one of my favorite Thomas B. Dewey novels starring his Chicago private eye, Mac.

• That’s a shame. Eighty-one-year-old actor Robert Vaughn, who starred in the 1964-1968 NBC-TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., “told fans during an appearance at the Dean Martin Expo in New York that he was never approached about doing a cameo” in director Guy Ritchie’s forthcoming Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature film. The HMSS Weblog notes that when Vaughn was asked what sort of cameo appearance he’d have liked to do, he joked, “I would have wanted to be the guy pressing the clothes.”

• Crimespree Magazine’s Jeremy Lynch reports that Stuart Neville’s 2013 thriller, Ratlines, is being developed as a TV program by Ireland-based Ripple World Pictures and Los Angeles-based KGB Films. “Neville will not just handle writing duties, but will also act as an executive producer for the proposed series,” Lynch adds.

• Meanwhile, happy 10th anniversary to Crimespree!

• Which are the 10 episodes that show Peter Falk’s Columbo to be “the most iconic TV detective of all time”? A.V. Club’s Gwen Ihnat’s picks include the pilot, Prescription: Murder, “Étude In Black” (starring John Cassavetes), “A Friend in Need” (starring Richard Kiley), “Try and Catch Me” (starring Ruth Gordon), and “Butterfly in Shades of Grey” (the second episode featuring William Shatner). Sadly, one of my personal favorites, “Negative Reaction” (which featured Dick Van Dyke as a murderous photographer), didn’t make the cut.

• And though 1950’s The Drowning Pool isn’t one of my favorites among Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer P.I. novels, I’m pleased to see it win favorable notice in blogger NancyO’s The Crime Segments.

• Did the often bizarre, 1990-1991 ABC-TV series Twin Peaks really prepare the stage for what some critics call our present “golden age” of television? That’s the case

proffered by Salon’s James Orbesen, who contends that “Many of the defining aspects of Twin Peaks can seem clichéd today: Its narrative intricacy, its darkness, its reliance on antiheroes. But that’s just because we are by now so used to the show’s sensibility in our televised diet. What set this show apart has so thoroughly been assimilated that talking about it is like pointing to the sky and calling it blue. But this engaging, surreal and occasionally frustrating, 30-episode series about the hunt for a prom queen’s killer was ahead of its time. Many of today’s modern classics owe it a debt audiences might not be aware of.”

• If you haven’t noticed yet, Kevin Burton Smith has refreshed his Thrilling Detective Web Site with new stories by Frederick Zackel (looking back at the 1974 film Chinatown), Thomas Pluck (doing his own reassessment of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye), Ben Solomon (reminding us of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation), and others. Click here to find Smith’s comments on this latest update.

• This September conference looks like great fun!

• The Cult TV Blog is busy now, looking back fondly at Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), the 1960-1962 UK series featuring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake.

• By the way, if you haven’t seen the opening title sequence from that show in a while, it’s one of the latest additions to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page. You can see it here.

• Megan Abbott dreamcasts the film to be made someday from her new novel, The Fever (Little, Brown). “I never think of specific people while writing a book,” she remarks in My Book, the Movie. “It would feel too specific, maybe limiting. But, as a movie-lover since childhood, once the book is complete, I often imagine the possibilities. And so I find myself doing that with The Fever.”

• In today’s Guardian, Melanie (aka M.J.) McGrath, author of The Boy in the Snow and the forthcoming The Bone Seeker, muses on why it is that women enjoy reading rater explicit crime fiction. “For women required in youth to be decorous and in maturity to be invisible,” she writes, “crime fiction gives us permission to touch on our own indecorous feelings of rage, aggression and vengefulness, sentiments we’re encouraged to pack away somewhere, along with the big underwear and the tampons, where they won’t offend.”

• Nineteen things you may not know about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Daily Telegraph. No. 3: “He wasn’t knighted for his fiction. In 1902, the writer was knighted by King Edward VII. He was also appointed a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. However, he wasn’t knighted for having created Sherlock Holmes. He was made a knight for his work on a non-fiction pamphlet regarding the Boer War.”

• A fine review of Philip Kerr’s Prayer.

• In a new interview with Neal Thompson of Amazon, Alan Furst talks about his work on Midnight in Europe (Random House), his 13th historical spy thriller.

• Finally, organizers of PulpFest 2014 have announced their latest set of eight nominees for the Munsey Award, “annually presented to a deserving individual who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp [fiction] community …” In addition, one person--convention “grunt work” expert J. Barry Traylor--has been put forward as a possible recipient of the Rusty Hevelin Service Award, “designed to recognize those individuals within the pulp community who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” Winners will be presented on Saturday, August 9, during PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio.

The Book You Have to Read: “Yardie,” by Victor Headley

(Editor’s note: This is the 127th entry in The Rap Sheet’s ongoing blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today we welcome back an old friend and colleague, Michael G. Jacob, who, with Daniela De Gregorio and under the joint pseudonym “Michael Gregorio,” has penned four historical mysteries featuring early 18th-century Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis, most recently 2010’s Unholy Awakening. The pair’s latest novel is a non-series work, Your Money Or Your Life, a mystery set during the 16th-century Italian Renaissance and released in English last month by the French publisher Didier-Paper Planes.)

Murder One used to be a regular stop on my occasional visits to London. It was the first and certainly the best British bookshop for crime-fiction readers. Unfortunately, that store in Charing Cross Road closed down in 2009, after 21 years, when owner and novelist Maxim Jakubowski retired from the business (though Murder One UK continues to operate online as a specialist in crime books).

On one of my visits there 20 years ago, I picked up Yardie (The X Press, 1992), a slim volume by a debut writer that I had never heard of before, Jamaican-born Victor Headley, and I was totally taken by it. As a result, in the succeeding years I bought Headley’s follow-up works: Exce$$ (1993), Yush (1994), Fetish (1995), Here Comes the Bride (1997), and Off Duty (2001).

So, what was the attraction of Yardie, and why am I writing this note today, more than two decades after it first appeared?

The first thing that gripped me was the book’s cover image of a snub-nosed 9mm Saturday night special pointing straight into your face. It was blunt, brutal, threatening--and I loved it. Later editions of Yardie were adorned with smarter, slicker, better-produced images, but the original cover encapsulated the menace that runs like quicksilver throughout Headley’s story.

D., a Jamaican drugs “star,” backstreet “gangsta,” and small-time dealer in the Yard (aka Kingston, Jamaica), visits England for the first time on a “mission,” carrying a kilo of cocaine for the London branch of the Spicers street gang. He likes what he sees--the high life, fancy clothes, fast cars, big money--so he makes his play for fame and fortune, ripping off his bosses and their associates, and setting up his own organization in direct competition.

Right from the start, you know there’s a gang war heating up.

As many critics noted at the time of Yardie’s original release, there was nothing very original about the story. It might have been inspired by James Cagney in The Public Enemy. At the same time, I found it fascinating. Set in a social milieu of which I knew absolutely nothing--north London’s Jamaican underworld--the novel touched on a lot of significant themes. It was about poor people trying to emerge from the shadows, using whatever means they could lay their hands on--drugs, guns, easy money--and there was a compulsive, fast-moving rhythm to the storytelling, an abundance of detail about Britain’s Jamaican community which was eye-opening. D rises to the top of the tree in no time. He has a child, a “baby mother” to cook and clean for him, other lovers, and he always puts business before everything and everyone. His climb seems inevitable, as does the probability that his plans won’t succeed.

You get it? Macbeth, pride coming before a fall, the wheel of fortune turning, turning ...

This was a potential Jamaican low-life tragedy set in London.

If you manage to get beneath the skin of the Yardie patois and the day-to-day banality of trading drugs, there’s a rich world of characters and situations in these pages that you will never have met before in an English crime novel. Jamaican food, Jamaican music, Jamaican friends, Jamaican enemies, the exiled Jamaican’s nostalgia for the Yard, the Caribbean home and poverty he has reluctantly left behind him.

As I said before, I went into Murder One on Charing Cross Road, looking for something different, and I came out holding Victor Headley in my hand.

I re-read Yardie not long ago, and loved it all over again. A crime novel doesn’t have to be packed with twists and turns and explosive denouements to work. All it needs is a man with a tale to tell, and the language to tell it with. Victor Yardley had both. The economy of his prose is truly remarkable. It takes a while to crack the code, but once you do, you’ll enjoy the rich sensuality of the language.

“Is truth you ah talk, Jahman,” D. said after a while. “Black people cyan get a break in dis time unless it’s t’rough music or sports. If a man don’t have dem form of skills, him still ha fe make a living, differently. Dat is why we must take some risks, try fe de best.”

Victor Headley took a lot of risks, and he did his best.

(A previous version of this “forgotten books” review appeared in Michael Gregorio’s blog.)

Dark Deeds from an Enlightened Age

(Editor’s note: In the post below, R.N. “Roger” Morris, author of the recently published historical thriller A Razor Wrapped in Silk [which stars mid-19th-century Russian detective Porfiry Petrovich], talks with the authors who publish as “Michael Gregorio” about the challenges of writing as a couple, Prussian vampires, and the Italian mafia.)

Daniela de Gregorio and Mike Jacob, aka “Michael Gregorio.”

Rap Sheet contributor Michael Gregorio is the author of four gripping Prussia-set historical crime novels of the Napoleonic period. He is also two people, the husband-and-wife writing team of Michael G. Jacob and Daniela de Gregorio, who live in Spoleto, a small town in central Italy’s Umbria region. Mike and Daniela have twice interviewed me for The Rap Sheet (here and here). Having recently read--and loved--the latest book in their series, Unholy Awakening (Minotaur), I thought it was about time I returned the compliment.

R.N. Morris: I consider myself very lucky, because I got in on the Hanno Stiffeniis series right at the beginning with your first novel, A Critique of Criminal Reason (one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2006). That title hints at a link with the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who of course features directly in the book, and indeed casts his shadow over your hero, magistrate/investigator Stiffeniis, in every subsequent book. The standard question for historical crime novelists is “What drew you to your chosen period and setting?” Am I right in thinking that it had something to do with a preoccupation with Kant?

Michael Gregorio: Back in 2000, we were working separately on novels, but neither of us seemed to be going any­­where. Daniela was teaching philosophy, and she was fascinated by something she had read about the Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Indeed, she had plans to write a short story about the great thinker, and the rough ex-soldier, Martin Lampe, who was his personal valet. The two men had been living under the same roof for almost 30 years when, one day, the servant was sacked on the spot. What had Lampe done to give offense? And why did the “most rational man in the world” paste notices around his house, remind­ing himself to “Forget Martin Lampe”? Kant’s biographers had little to say on the subject, so we began working together on a possible explanation. The result in 2006 was A Critique of Criminal Reason.

Our first novel portrayed Kant’s last days, and it shocked many purists, apparently. We had come across an article in The Lancet suggesting that the philosopher’s old age was plagued by a form of Alzheimer’s disease described at the time as dementia. Can you imagine the most rational man in the world going nuts? It was the stuff that novels are made of ...

At the end of the book, we killed him off, as you probably recall. We never intended to use Kant as a serial subject, nor as a detective. Instead, we created a protégé, a young magistrate named Hanno Stiffeniis, an ex-student of Kant’s, as our hero. Hanno idolizes Kant until he actually meets him, and realizes that he is all too human. As a result, Hanno Stiffeniis is tormented by his fear of what Kant may have said or written about him. Like all lead characters, our magistrate is tormented by his own demons ...

In short, our novels are about Hanno Stiffeniis, his wife, and his family. You don’t need to study philosophy, know about Kant, or read our novels in chronological sequence to follow what’s going on. We think of Immanuel Kant as “wallpaper,” like Napoleon, Prussia, the Age of Enlightenment. These elements add color and context to the novels, while each investigation stands on its own.

RNM: Picking up on that “color and context,” let me say that the early 19th-century setting of all the books is utterly convincing. I particularly admire the way you have captured the complexities and tensions of an occupied country, as played out in the relationship between the Prussians and the occupying French. Hanno, as a Prussian magistrate is, of course, caught in the middle. How difficult was it to get a handle on that? How much came from specific research? And how much was the result of a brilliant imaginative leap?

MG: Thanks for allowing us the possibility of a brilliant imaginative leap! The fact is, when we began to write about the period, we had only the vaguest notions of Prussia and life in occupied Napoleonic Europe. Having said that, both of us are history buffs. Dani teaches the subject, while I have publish­ed a lot on the history of photography in the 19­th century. Still, we did need to learn a great deal more about the time and place before we could write a convincing novel. As we both enjoy reading and research, it proved to be more of a pleasure than a grind. Finding the stuff to read was more tricky, as there seems to be so little which is readily available, apart from standard histories, which are pretty dull. Then again, the French produced L’Encylopedie, a universal guide to all aspects of culture, commerce, science, and invention in the period. We consulted it extensively. There happens to be an original copy in our town library! Military memoirs of the Napoleonic period also give away snippets about life and conditions--British military historians are the very best--and then you start branching into areas from which much more can be derived--the lives of German philosophers, musicians, artists and architects, German literature from [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe to the Grimm brothers. It was an extremely rich cultural panorama, bursting with ideas from the bright to the bizarre. Having got a grip on the basic facts, we started to make some of those “brilliant imaginative leaps” you were mentioning. You weren’t being ironical, were you?

For example, we live in Italy, which has extremes of climate, like northern Germany. The winters in Spoleto are as cold as those in Lotingen [the hometown of Hanno and his wife]. And medieval towns are pretty much the same wherever you go. The poorer parts of Italy and Germany were not so different. The important thing is to omit anything which sounds false. Convincing description is a matter of a few well-chosen words, and a plot which carries you through it.

RNM: As you mentioned it, let’s talk about plot. What do you look for in a plot? How do you go about constructing yours? I’m interested to know how the process works when there are two writers working together. Do you ever disagree about what should happen? And if so, who’s usually right?

MG: Plots are a lot like the sonata form in classical music: theme, development, reversal, resolution. Having said that, each sonata is distinct and different. We generally open with a short atmospheric introduction to paint the scene. Then we want a murder and a mystery which will immediately hook the reader’s interest in the first few pages. The crime must really resonate--the stakes are always high when somebody commits a murder--so more murders will follow on with diversions in the form of red herrings, errors of judgment, false trails, apparent clues which may be relevant or not, suspicions confounded, and a growing sense of frustration, helpless­ness, and chaos. At that point, we start to work towards a dramatic confrontation and a dénouement which will restore some sort of order. That’s the theory, anyway ...

We have learnt how to write our own form of mystery, and it seems to work. A thorough working-out of the story line helps us focus even before we start writing. We decide precisely what we want, and how we would like the story to unfold. Then, as it starts unfolding, we make decisions about the way that it is developing. And here the joys and the tribulations of working together kick in. One of us--it could be either one--would like things to happen in a certain way, or in a certain order, and we don’t always agree on the direction or the approach. We have often written two or more versions of a particular scene or chapter before deciding which way it should go. As a general rule, Daniela holds the compass and I wield the scissors, cutting out unnecessary steps along the way. We tend to be right when we finally agree. It’s an odd sort of chemistry, but when the light shines through we both seem to see it.

RNM: Ah, yes, the atmospheric introduction. The opening to your latest, Unholy Awakening, is a master class in Atmosphere, and it fair scared the bejesus out of me. The book has a vampire-related theme, although it’s a million miles from Stephenie Meyer. It’s interesting to compare today’s fashionable preoccupation with vampires with the genuine terror that existed in Prussia at the time of your novel. How do you see the differences? And were you at all wary of writing a “vampire novel”?

MG: A lot of fresh blood has been suckled from the vampire myth in recent years. Nowadays we think automatically of Stephenie Meyer, but what about the vampires of Anne Rice, Elizabeth Kostova, Fred Vargas, or John Ajvide Lindqvist? We felt there was still much more to be said, and we wanted to set it in the context from which it naturally sprang: the woodland culture of East Prussia, where the Grimm brothers were collecting folk tales of witches, wolves, and goblins at the dawn of the 19th century.

There could hardly be a more fitting time or place for a vampire novel!

Long before Bram Stoker created the legendary figure of reclusive Count Dracula, there was a vast corpus of documentary evidence recording the terror which the fear of vampires unleashed in rural towns and villages. Maria-Theresa of Austria prohibited the digging-up of the dead after outbreaks of vampire fever disrupted the Empire in 1755, for example. There was nothing romantic about these accounts, nothing fascinating about the vampire. The chronicles spoke of a familiar face which enters a house, bringing disease and death on the inhabitants. Having infected a town or a village, the plague moved on from one house to the next in an appalling epidemic of fear and death. More than anything, the vampire represented the danger of falling in love with, being spellbound by, or married to a person who becomes the open door through which evil enters your life.

This is what happens to Hanno Stiffeniis in Unholy Awakening.

We’re not concerned about being accused of jumping on a bandwagon. People have been writing about vampires for centuries. We chanced on a text written by the Bishop of Trani in southern Italy in 1741. Giuseppe Davanzati examined the vampire phenomenon for the benefit of Pope Benedict XIV. An Enlightened scholar, Davanzati ascribed the widespread terror to popular ignorance regarding death and human decomposition, hypothesizing that bands of brigands exploited these fears to their advantage. It might have been magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis talking! Prussia had fallen victim to vampire terror many times, as the chronicles recount. Intimidated by the success of Stephenie Meyer or Fred Vargas? Not at all. We had a story of our own to tell.

RNM: Absolutely ... It’s rooted in the Prussia of that period, but also in keeping with your own darker than dark brand of noir. A couple of years ago you very kindly invited me to take part in the inaugural Trevi Noir Festival (I’m assuming it’s like the Olympics and will take place every four years). One of the objectives of that festival was to bring together British and Italian crime writers, to explore and celebrate our differences as well as our similarities. One of you is Italian, the other English, so you’re in a better position than most to have view on this. What distinguishes Italian noir from the English--and also, if you like, the American--tradition? Who are the Italian writers Rap Sheet readers ought to be looking out for? And are they available in English, please?

MG: Trevi Noir really went well. We had a lot of distinguished British writers, Laura Wilson, Andrew Taylor, Maxim Jakubowski, and, of course, the great Roger Morris. On the Italian front we had Kai Zen (four guys from all over the peninsula who write together by way of the Internet), Patrick Fogli, Diego De Silva, and Simone Sarasso. Somewhere in the middle were Daniela, myself, and Ben Pastor, an Italo-American, who lives in Italy. The significant difference between Italian and British crime writing emerged in a well-put question from our agent, Leslie Gardner: OK, said Leslie, historical reconstruction’s fine, but what about the central character? This really is the crux. English writers tend to be known for a character they have created, whether it be Porfiry, Stiffeniis, or [Ian Rankin’s] Rebus, while Italian noir is essentially political, left-wing, and revisionist. Leslie suggested that Italian writers were so involved in trying to explain the enigmas of Italian history--the bombing of Bologna station (Fogli), or where the terrorist Red Brigades came from (Sarasso)--that they didn’t take the time to create gripping fictional characters. From a British point of view, it is a reasonable criticism.

There are Italian crime writers who have created memorable characters--Massimo Carlotto’s Alligator, Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano, for instance--and it may just be a coincidence, but they are translated into English. My favorite Italian noir is Giuseppe Genna’s In the Name of Ishmael, which I read in an excellent English translation. Genna combines politics, conspiracy, and incidents from recent history in a compelling way, though his other books (notably the controversial novel, Hitler) are still looking for an English publisher. Barbara Baraldi [The Girl with the Crystal Eyes] is another Italian writer who has been published in the UK, and her work tends to be character-based and set in Bologna.

The real problem for native Italian authors is that they are competing with writers like the late Michael Dibdin or Donna Leon, whose portrayals of Italian society are really superficial--I call them “art, wine, and cookery” crime novels--but who have an army of English readers. Oddly, Dibdin is published and read in Italy, while Donna Leon is not.

When is the next Trevi Noir Olympics? Well, we are still recovering from the last one. We have never worked so hard in our lives!

RNM: Thanks for the recommendations. I know you’re both huge fans of the film Gomorra, which presents an absolutely authentic depiction of Italian organized crime. I also know that you’ve taught creative writing to the inmates of your local prison, some of whom are alleged to be mafiosi. How does it feel coming face to face with real killers, after spending so much time creating fictional ones? If nothing else, the experience must have given you some great material.

MG: Yes, we wrote a couple of spirited defenses of Gomorra for The Rap Sheet after the film failed to win the approval we thought that it deserved from the Oscars in the States. Matteo Garrone’s film (and the book by Roberto Saviano which inspired it) made a huge impression in a country where organized crime by mafia clans is daily news. It opened up a window on a ruthless world that very few people knew about. “Lifelike” was not the word for it. Now, when you hear on TV that a mayor was shot in a mafia-type execution in a small town near Salerno yesterday, or that the mafia has managed to infiltrate the costly building programs for the projected 2015 Expo in Milan, you have a context, a sense of what is happening. No one can hope to “understand” Italy unless they’re aware of how closely political corruption and organized crime are linked. It is estimated that a sixth of the Gross National Product is in the hands of mafia organizations like the Camorra (Naples), ’Ndrangheta (Calabria), and the Corona Unita (Puglia). Roberto Saviano’s wordplay on Gomorrah and Camorra was intentional and it was loaded with moral and social significance. Both the book and the film were documentaries as much as they were fiction.

And yes, we do know some of these people by name.

A couple of years ago, we were invited to the local high-security prison in Spoleto to talk about one of our books. We have been teaching some of the inmates ever since. We ask them to write about their lives and criminal experiences. That is, we get them to “fictionalize” it. They are all “lifers” condemned for violent crimes associated with the mafia. As they refuse to name the other members of their clans, under Italian law “life” means “life without remission.” Visits from their families and us are all they’ve got. They are extremely nice with us and they seem to appreciate the effort we make. We take their writing seriously, and we help them to pass the time.

They often say things that set you thinking, however. One guy went philosophical on us one day, wondering why normal people are “so fascinated by violence.” Another prisoner, a big boss from Palermo, insists that he is “like the Fiat factory in Turin”: he creates work for hundreds of people and boosts the local economy. Sometimes amazing snippets emerge. One of them told us how they plan an important hit by “testing the gun” to make sure it won’t block or backfire. You go out and shoot someone who “deserves a bullet.” When the gun has passed the test, it’s ready for the big job.

One day, however, we were unable to go to the prison. We had to cancel the visit. The week after, Daniela explained to them that her headmistress had planned a teachers’ meeting that day, and that she had refused to change the date. Daniela had no choice; she had to go to the meeting. One of our “students” looked at Dani, smiled and said: “Just give me her name …”

RNM: That’s very chilling. But funny too.

MG: Yes, isn’t it? We do what our students do: we never name names.

RNM: So what’s next for Michael Gregorio? Can you share with us what you’re working on at the moment? Another Hanno novel, or perhaps something drawing on your deep understanding of Italy? That explosive combination of political corruption and organized crime that you mentioned must be grist to the mill for crime writers.

MG: Well, Unholy Awakening is in the shops, and we are already working on the next one. It will not be the fifth Hanno Stiffeniis mystery. It’s time for Hanno to take a break. As you guessed, there are other scenarios closer to home that strongly attract us. The emergence of the mafia in the aftermath of the Second World War, for example. It was a troubled time, a period of great social chaos. More civilians died in the three years after the signing of the Armistice than during the five years that Italy had been at war. We are talking of at least 180,000 murders. As the Allies moved north, an undeclared civil war broke out. People started paying off their war debts, taking revenge on political enemies, getting even with their neighbors who had wield­ed power as fascist party members. After 20 years of totalitarian dictatorship, three years of fighting on the side of the Germans, and two more as the despised allies of the Allies, it was inevitable, perhaps.

We are very excited about the new story. [In it,] Raoul Sodano, an ex-fascist policeman, has not entirely come to terms with his recent past, though he has been co-opted to work as an investigator with the American authorities in Rome. A number of women have disappeared, and some of them have been brutally murdered. When Raoul discovers that one of the missing women is English, things warm up. Who was Catherine Allison, and what exactly was she doing in fascist Rome?

RNM: It sounds tremendous--can’t wait to read it. On which note, I’d better let you get back to work!

The Gang’s All Here

Last night, my wife, Daniela, and I sat through the widely acclaimed, 2008 Italian Mafia movie Gomorra for the fourth or fifth time. Each time we watch it, we rate it more highly than on the occasion before.

So, why didn’t Gomorra win an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, or even Best Film? Why didn’t it so much as make the shortlist?

Because after decades of Italian cinema of a certain type, starting out with the tragic Bicycle Thieves (1948), moving on to the work of that lovable genius, Federico Fellini, coasting through the BAFTA and Academy Award-winning Il Postino (The Postman, 1994), and ending up with a banal pastiche such as cuddly old Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (1997), America was simply not ready for Gomorra, Matteo Garrone’s film based on Roberto Saviano’s 2006 semi-documentary “novel” about gang life in modern Naples.

That is, Hollywood wasn’t ready, and here are some reasons why:

1. Americans judge Mafia films by Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (Parts 1 and 2 of which are tops, while Part 3 was a total washout). That series was all about the members of a large family of Italian immigrants, and their second-generation children, doing the wrong things for the right reasons (i.e., honor, family unity, friendship, etc.). By contrast, Gomorra has no identifiable hero, no reluctant Michael Corleone stepping into the limelight to avenge his father, no “noble” code of omertà (that is, “right” behavior among the criminal class). It is all about the mean, dirty business of scraping by in a society (southern Italy) which is barbarous, totally corrupt, and without any hope of possible redemption.

2. There is no story, no significant development, no grand conclusion which leaves you pondering how things might have been in a better world. There is no worse world possible than the mean streets of Naples. The five stories that make up the mosaic of this movie are all dead-end options--you give in to the inevitable, or you die. The only character who says no--Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) rejects the chance of a job dumping toxic waste--is dismissed with the following comment: “Go on then, fuck off, go and be a pizza-chef.”

3. There is no moral to Gomorra. People kill and are killed because of the world they live in. Among the things Daniela and I do is teach writing to “lifers” in the high-security prison in Spoleto, Italy, most of whom are unrepentant “associates” of the Camorra, ’Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and similar Mafia bands. They say, and Gomorra confirms, that you have no choice if you happen to be born into that world. As the film puts it, “Are you with us, or against us?” If you choose the latter option, you don’t live long.

4. Gomorra makes no concessions to the audience. The language is incomprehensible, even for Italians. The Italian print of the film is subtitled! You are in a jungle where the baboons act out their nasty rituals, no explanations given. Why do so many people die? Because they are expendable worker ants. The Camorra can find a thousand new soldiers every week in a world where there are no jobs, and every man is desperate to provide for his family.

5. Director Garrone (a genius, if ever there was one) simply watches what goes on. There is no tension, no controlled build-up, no narrative “style” in a “story” where anything can--and does--happen at any time. This is the film equivalent of Raymond Chandler’s maxim about pepping up a dull scene by throwing in a guy who jumps through the door and starts shooting. Remember how quickly Chandler gave up on Hollywood, where everything had to be carefully structured? In Gomorra, random shooting is not a device to avoid boredom; it reflects a fact of life. At least four or five shootings in southern Italy are reported every day on the national TV news.

6. The actors in this film are not actors. With the exception of Toni Servillo, there is hardly a professional face on the set. And yet, paradoxically, the performers are all brilliant, simply being themselves. Indeed, since this film came out, at least five of the “actors” have been jailed for belonging to “Mafia associations.” Why use actors when the street is full of criminals who will play themselves for a fair day’s pay? Isn’t this neorealism?

7. The situations described in the movie are devoid of all romance. Is there a love scene? A kiss? Perhaps a helping hand offered to somebody in distress? The film is totally driven by money, what it means to have it, or not have it. Sex is bought, not won. It is, therefore, and by definition, a squalid life. Think of the saccharine Life Is Beautiful and you will see how far the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is prepared to ignore historical truth in the interests of palatable fiction!

8. Where are the mandolin players? The spaghetti eaters? The tarantella dancers?

9. What happened to friendly smiling Italians? Ice cream? Pizza?

10. And what about the Italian landscape, art, and culture?

As you will realize, I gave up trying very hard at about point #7. For any Italian, or anyone who has lived in Italy for 29 years, as I have, Gomorra is a riveting reflection of the bad news that we hear every day on television and radio. It is the Italian film of the last 50 years!

Just to put all of this in context: This morning I went swimming. Everyone at the pool was adorable, friendly. Then I went shopping, and I chatted with half a dozen people. Outside the supermarket a gypsy in a straw hat was playing the accordion beautifully (begging, of course, but, well, the scene was chockfull of folklore). I returned home, saw my 90-year-old neighbor, Signora Orlanda, and we had the same conversation that we have every morning. “How are you?” I ask. “How should I be?” she answers. Then, she wishes me “buon pranzo,” which means “Have a good lunch.”

It isn’t even 10 o’clock in the morning.

But there you go, that’s the “real” Italy ...

The Story Behind the Story: “A Visible Darkness,” by Michael Gregorio

(Editor’s note: Today, The Rap Sheet introduces a new, occasional series of reports from authors detailing the background of their latest novels. We inaugurate this feature with a delightful contribution from “Michael Gregorio,” a byline behind which hides the husband-and-wife writing team of Daniela De Gregorio and Michael G. Jacob. This pair have now written three historical mysteries featuring early 19th-century Prussian magistrate-cum-detective Hanno Stiffeniis, the newest of which is A Visible Darkness, released this month by Minotaur Books. In addition to being increasingly acclaimed members of the crime-fiction community, De Gregorio and Jacob are The Rap Sheet’s Italian correspondents.)

What is the secret of Hamlet?

While it may seem presumptuous to open with such a question, it is probably wise to start with one of the greatest literary works of all time, because all published works of the imagination have a lot of things in common, regardless of the skill of the individual writer.

To put it another way: why does Hamlet continue to sell?

We believe that there any number of reasons, but two or three are essential if we want to talk about publishing in the real world. For the writer of today, the marketplace is made up of airport outlets, high-street book­shops, and online booksellers, while feedback comes from blogs and news­paper reviews. Although things were clearly different in William Shakespeare’s day, Hamlet was a revenge tragedy, a popular potboiler, not a poetic work written in a moment of soul-searching by an author staring intensely at his navel, though it turned out to be both poetic and soul-searching (and intense navel-staring does have its attractions). The play was written for the public stage in the East End of early 17th-century London, and was seen by an audience which may, or may not, have been intellectually equipped to comprehend (a little, some, or all of ) it. Many people--the critics, let’s call them--would have thrown rotten eggs and been totally puzzled!

At the same time, Shakespeare had hit on a story which was bound to fascinate a lot of people: Did my (beloved) mother and (cynical) uncle really dare to poison my (adored) father, the king, in oh-so-distant Denmark; and, if so, what should I (prince, and rightful heir) do about it? Very few people had ever been to Elsinore, so the “exotic” setting was perfect, and it was neutral--cold battlements frequented by ghosts, a graveyard in the night, people concealing themselves behind curtains, a play-within-the-play. And how many people in the audience had felt like stabbing a hated uncle, or punishing the mother who had made them?

To the contemporary reader, Hamlet seems to anticipate the work of Sigmund Freud and dig deep into the complexity of human thoughts and motivations. This “modern” aspect of Hamlet is a blatant Leavisite fraud, however; women have always been amazingly complex--from Eve to Madonna--and blokes have never been slow to follow them down the dark and slippery slope, as Raymond Chandler, et al. have endlessly demonstrated in a million pulp novels.

So, how does all of this act as an introduction to A Visible Darkness?

Well, in the first instance, you have to remember that when Daniela and I began to write about Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis--it must be almost 10 years ago--we had no idea (but very high hopes) that we would be able to sell the first novel in what would, eventually, become a series. Books 2, 3, and 4 did not exist in any shape or form back then. Like William Shakespeare and everyone else, we were a one-book author when our revered agent, Leslie Gardner, sold Critique of Criminal Reason in the States to St. Martin’s Press, and the world rights in England to Faber and Faber. Suddenly we had a contract, and we were not slow to realize the implications: it was a contract for two books. At that point, and for the first time ever, we were faced with what can seem like a huge problem: where do we find another original story?

Well, it’s worth remembering Shakespeare once more. When he needed an idea he turned to Plutarch, ancient Rome, the English chronicles, or any other source that happened to be available (and little known). Who knew or cared about Romeo and Juliet before the Bard put pen to paper?

So, we sat down and began to concoct a new Hanno Stiffeniis investigation set in early 19th-century Prussia.

To be honest, we went to the volcanic Mediterranean island of Ischia and lay beside a swimming pool for a week, extended to 10 days, while we tried to decide where Hanno Stiffeniis would go next, and what he would do when he got there. We had an “exotic” setting: Prussia. We had a little-known historical “context”: the Napoleonic invasion of Prussia in 1806. We had our “criminal investigator” (in the sense that Hanno Stiffeniis is not all sweetness and light, and that he has a guilty back story). So, what might happen when Emperor Napoleon attempts to impose French laws and French rationality on the hidebound Prussian homeland of the Brothers Grimm and Hanno Stiffeniis?

The result of the blazing sun, blue sea, and good food in Ischia was Days of Atonement (2007), which is set in the coldest, darkest, poorest winter in living memory. Hanno begins to investigate a child massacre in his hometown, Lotingen, which takes him to the remote Prussian fortress of Kamenetz, and eventually to Bialystok in Poland, where he encounters the possible killer of the children in an asylum for the insane where Mesmeric medicine is used to cure all ills (obviously, this is the brief plot summary).

Now, for the bitter truth ...

Lotingen is an invention, of course, as is Kamenetz, and as for Bialystok, well! Mesmerism was a historical fact, and therefore it came in useful. We were on the road to telling lies professionally!
Having done so twice with relative success, our publisher wanted more, and a contract for two more books came out of it. A Visible Darkness is the third in the series, and we are working on Book 4 (still untitled) at the moment.

The fact is that telling the story does become easier, and for a number of reasons.

By now, we know Hanno Stiffeniis quite well. We drew him first as a young, inexperienced magistrate, ex-student of the Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in the year 1804. He goes to Königsberg at the behest of Kant, solves a mystery, and watches Kant on his death bed. Many critics thought we had made a mistake by “killing off” our hero in Book 1, but the truth is that Immanuel Kant was never the hero. Hanno Stiffeniis is our protagonist, a man torn between Rational certainty and the gathering darkness of Romanticism. In the second novel, Days of Atonement, his philosophical mentor is no more than a distant memory, and Prussia has been crushed by Napoleon and the French invasion. Hanno is thrown into a state of intense conflict between his own desires for revenge on the foreign occupiers, and his duty as a Prussian magistrate who must work alongside the French invaders.

For that second book, we created a brilliant French investigator, a flamboyant and creative “detective” who would taunt and challenge Hanno Stiffeniis. Serge Lavedrine was so successful--at least in the eyes of our editors, Walter Donohue at Faber, and Peter Joseph at St. Martin’s--that they both wanted him to appear again in our third novel, A Visible Darkness. But we had a different story to write this time, and Monsieur Lavedrine did not figure in it. We promised the editors, however, that we would bring him back in Book 4, and we are doing just that at the present time.

So, what was/is the story contained in A Visible Darkness, the book we had to write?

Well, the first thing to say is that--having denied our editors’ wishes regarding the second appearance of Lavedrine--we were very nervous about sending in the finished manuscript of A Visible Darkness.

Would our editors, Donohue and Joseph, like it? Would they sit back patiently and wait for Book 4 before their hero finally reappeared?

Donohue wrote back at once: “It’s the best thing you’ve ever done,” he said. Joseph sent a note which was just as enthusiastic. Indeed, he used the word “fantastic” six or seven times in as many lines!

Had we written our own Hamlet?

Well, of course, we hadn’t, but we had written our own Book 3, having learnt the lesson from Shakespeare, and just about everyone else. Book 1 takes place in Königsberg in February 1804; the story in Book 2 is set in remote East Prussia during the autumn of 1808; Book 3 takes place on the Baltic coast in summer, 1809; the action in Book 4 moves to the spring of 1810, and we will say no more for now!

So, we changed the season, we changed the location, we changed the nature of the crime, we sent Hanno off into the heart of the French camp, and this time, he has no one to back him up. Kant is dead, Lavedrine is in Italy, his wife, Helena, is at home expecting another child (the family has been growing book by book), and Hanno, though now slightly older and more experienced, is still lost when faced with a serious crime. He is not a detective in any modern sense, but a small-town magistrate who usually handles crimes involving, say, the accidental crushing of a hen beneath a cart wheel, or the theft of a dozen eggs. On this occasion, Hanno is sent to the Baltic coast, where the naked, mutilated body of a young woman has been found lying on the shore. The area is rich in valuable amber, so-called “Baltic gold,” and the French have taken over the lucrative trade ...

Circumstances throw Hanno Stiffeniis into the arena without a sword, and he finds himself up against insuperable opponents. Will he survive? Will he solve the crime and be able to go home to his wife and family in Lotingen?

Remember Book 4!

It takes place one year after A Visible Darkness ends ...